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At my old job working for Zeta Interactive Agency, a great guy made a solid point I will probably never forget. He stated that “designing a website is like building a car.” He then went on to basically explain the same point I am going to outline from my experience.

When designing a website, I think of the web users as if they were buying a car. I ask myself what parts of the car should be instinctive when they are driving it? The steering wheel, stick shift, brake, gas peddle. On a website, these parts are the navigation and site structure. The best designs are consistent and easy to navigate through. Where ever the customer goes throughout the site the navigation is the same everywhere with out confusion. They don’t get lost trying to find their way around.

Making the car design stand out from the rest is like adding leather seats, a sunroof, seat warmers, nice sound system. On the website, incorporating subtle programming features, quality images, clean typography, and some subtle flash can make all the difference against your competitors.

I have a German car. When I was shopping around comparing my car to others, some of the great selling points were the quality of my car and how well it drove. I felt like I was in a car that was build to last. The same goes for great web design. When a potential customer comes to your site, you want them to feel like this is the company I want to do business with.

Tags: Small Business Web Design, Web, Web Design, Web Design Tips

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 9:21 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.